


My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark

by aslightstep



Series: Drabblethon: Stony Edition [3]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Axis (Marvel), Bitter Steve, Gen, Incursions never happened, Not A Fix-It, Old man steve never happened, Superior Iron Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslightstep/pseuds/aslightstep
Summary: Burn everything you love/Then burn the ashesTony Stark is taking over the world one piece at a time. Steve has to stop him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my Drabblethon series. Song is My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light 'Em Up) by Fall Out Boy.

There’s a channel on the news dedicating entirely to Avalon now. All day and all night cameras and satellites watch Tony Stark’s sky island as the air cruisers carrying hundreds of one-in-a-million passengers ferry to and from the city.

The people that go in aren’t always rich. In fact, most of them aren’t. Most of them are average, everyday, living average, everyday, boring lives. Of course, Tony caters to the clientele. Every world leader has gone. Even Carol has been, though Stark kept her to one of the smaller islands anchored below Avalon. 

The rich, the powerful, they come back the same. But the others - they come back different. They never say they had a good time - most can’t even remember the majority of the seven-day maximum time allowed spent there. ‘It changed my life,’ is the common theme. They’re maybe a little bit smarter, a little bit tougher, maybe they can move things with their mind if they’re not focussing.

They all talk about Stark as if he’s god.

No one stops it. No one would, would they? Tony Stark saved the world. He beat back the Shi’ar just when all hope seemed lost. They are in his debt, and he is collecting.

He rules the world, and he does it with such nonchalance. Countries place embargoes on trading with him and he shuts down their early-warning defense systems until they back down. SHIELD sends him warnings and a thousand drones wearing Iron Man’s old face land on the helicarrier for a friendly chat. Latveria, Atlantis, they launch small attacks that are destroyed. Stark films the body bags that he personally loads into helicopters to send back home and broadcasts it worldwide.

“Let it never be said that I am against ideas,” he says to the camera, his smile at one-million watts and like nothing you’ve ever seen. “Just you getting the wrong ones. We here in Avalon are only interested in a peaceful future. Can your leaders say the same?”

With a few honeyed words and a glimpse at a carefully controlled paradise, Stark changes the world. People kill for tickets upwards, and Maria Hill tells you one day that those particular people never come back down. Admiration for Avalon turns to imitation.

You seethe as you watch it happen slowly. Stark never needed bombs or secrets or lies to destroy the world. He never needed to betray you and all the rest of your friends. This was within his grasp the whole time.

It would be better if Stark was miserable. If he was lonely up on his island, surrounded by strangers. But you have never seen Tony so happy. He comes down to mingle with the common folk every once in awhile and he wheels and deals and manipulates everything to go his way, he drinks and never gets drunk, he smiles and laughs and has orgies he doesn’t even try to hide and he is _so happy_. All the things that used to weight him down, the guilt, the self-loathing, they haven’t disappeared, that’s not how the inversion worked. They’re just not important to him anymore. Along with everything that made him a hero. His thoughtfulness, his compassion. His fear of going too far. 

He works better, faster, quicker than ever before. He has never looked healthier. His former friends won’t speak with him. Pepper Potts won’t deal with him, though Stark Enterprise is never punished like the rest. When last he came down, Rhodes punched him in the face and Tony just laughed as the bruise healed before their eyes, clapped Jim on the shoulder and told him he was getting old. You have talked to him yourself, fought with him, multiple times, but he disarms you easily with words and tech. You hate him. You tell him so, as ardently and as often as you can. And he shrugs.

He’s burned every bridge he ever built. He has lost everything he once had, all his friends, his family, his team. He is utterly alone. And he is _so happy_.

You wonder if that’s why SHIELD is slow to act, as well. They’ve seen the evidence detailing experimentation, the satellite shots of Avalon showing massive fabrication plants spewing out robots. But Stark does nothing but build and tinker and rule over his tiny little world. He is content.

Until another Avalon appears.

Camelot is smaller, hanging around the Mediterranean Sea. Stark announces it as the daughter of Avalon (he is the son. He is the sun. He is the once and future king. You get it, Tony. Please stop.). Maria Hill suspects this new one won’t be the last. You think, of course. Stark could never quite bear living in this world. Of course he has to build his own.

Stark is staying in Camelot for the next week. It isn’t even finished, no defenses, no inhibitors in the air, nothing to prevent the small strike team you assemble from going in and taking him out.

By any means necessary.

 _I sound like you_ , you rage. _You’re remaking the whole world to be just like you._

_(At least you’ll die happy.)_

You sneak on board with Black Widow, Spider-Woman, Sue Storm, and Hank Pym. The team is beset upon by drones, but the others push you to keep moving. Old enemies have taught you well. Cut off one head and two more shall take its place. You have to take out the heart.

Stark is in his control room, all sleek and modern and strangely comfortable. He is clad, as he always is, in his silver-white armor, though he has long since ditched the headpiece. “Hey, you made it!” he says when he spots you. He smiles so brightly you want to shield your eyes and tuts at you. “You didn’t come here to fight, did you?”

“I came here to stop you,” you respond flatly, sinking into a fighter’s stance. 

“But…why?” Tony laughs, but somewhere under there is genuine confusion. “I’m not hurting anybody - well, even if I am, I make them all better. Beauty from pain, aren’t I right?”

“You’re kidnapping people - _experimenting_ on them -”

“Everyone comes to me of their own free will,” Tony corrects, his mouth flattening. “I’ve got 1.2 millions emails in my inbox right now from people all over the world begging me for a place on Camelot. They’re desperate. I’m helping them. I’m doing more good than I ever have before. Why would you want to stop this?”

“Because it isn’t right,” you shout, and you just wish Stark would show you something, give you a sign. Your old friend, your partner, he’s still in there somewhere and you just want to see him one last time.

And for a moment, Tony’s face darkens, and you have a ridiculous hope that you’ve gotten to him before he sighs, loud and theatrical. “That argument? Again? You never learn, do you. You never _listen_.” There are repulsors whining to life and Stark is levitating as his eyes glow blue. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s an old dog who can’t learn new tricks. In my opinion, there’s nothing to be done for them. They have no place in this world; they must simply be _put down_.” He fires and you dodge and the fight begins.

You want to go back five years - no, ten - no -

How many years have the two of you been broken? How many times did one of you or the other just put the pieces back together and hope against hope that the picture of your friendship held?

There is a searing pain through your abdomen and you look down at the hole gaping there. Stark has stopped dead, something like surprise flitting across his face. “I can fix that,” he says blankly, but it sounds like its coming from very far away. You’re on your knees, your hands, then the ground rises up to meet you. 

You see a red and gold robot out of the corner of your eye. “Shellhead,” you try to say through a mouthful of blood, and then it all goes dark.

* * *

He stops breathing just a few seconds later. Seconds where you could have been active, injecting him with Extremis, boosting the super soldier serum to new heights. He would heal in an instant.

He dies instead. You watch.

It had been so long since you fought anything, you have forgotten your own strength. You didn’t mean to. You would never want to kill him. He had annoyed you, but he always had. You used to like it.

The drones are reporting that the stealth squad has been forced off the island. Its just you, them, and the body. You should get back to work, but - the body - you should do something with the body -

You are wracked with indecision. You’ve forgotten what this felt like; how much you hated it. How much you hated yourself for it. You look at the body and it all comes screaming back. Extremis shoves it down but the taste of bile remains in your mouth.

Your perfect new world, and now all you’re going to remember is this.

“Steve,” you say, and your voice holds a note of something that you thought you’d programmed out months ago. “Steve, you’re ruining it.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me at my tumblaaa [here](http://aslightstep.tumblr.com)


End file.
